
Class 
Book. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



Niagara Falls 



in Miniature 





16 1896 






CHICAGO. 

Rand, McNally & Co. 
1896. 








t £ 



NIAGARA FALLS 



IN MINIATURE. 



Betwixt the Lakes Ontario 
and Erie, there is a vast and 
prodigious cadence of water, 
which falls down alter a 
surprising and astounding 
manner ; insomuch that the 
universe does not afford its 
parallel. 

—Louis Hennepin, 1697 



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COMPLIMENTS OF 




General msaenffer^f^ Ticket Agent 

\MAY 151896; 

CHICAGO : 
Rand, McNally & Co. 

T396. 



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Of all the sights on this earth of ours whict 
tourists travel to see, — at least of all those 
which I have seen,— I am inclined to give 
the palm to the Falls of Niagara. I kno-w 
no other one thing so beautiful, so glorious 
and so powerful. 

— Anthony Trollope 



NIAGARA. 

Thou flowest on in quiet^ till thy waves 
Grow broken midst the rocks; thy current then 
Shoots onward like the irresistible course 
Of Destiny. Ah, terribly they rage, — [brain 
The hoarse and rapid whirlpools there! My 
Grows wild, my senses wander, as I gaze 
Upon the hurrying waters; and my sight 
Vainly would follow, as toward the verge 
Sweeps the wide torrent. Waves innumerable 
Meet there and madden, — waves innumerable 
Urge on and overtake the waves before, 
And disappear in thunder and in foam. 

They reach, they leap the barrier, — the abyss 

Swallows insatiable the sinking waves. 

A thousand rainbows arch them, and the woods 

Are deafened with the roar. The violent shock 

Shatters to vapor the descending sheets. 

A cloudy whirlwind fills the gulf, and heaves 

The mighty pyramid of circling mist 

To heaven. 

-^Jose Maria Heredia. 

Translated by Wni. Cullen Bryant. 




There is nothing more translucently green 
nor more perennially still and lovely than 
Niagara the greater. At this, her awful 
brink, the whole architrave of the main 
abyss gleams like a fixed and glorious work 
wrought in polished aquamarine or emerald.i 
— Sir Edwin Arnold. 



ALONE WITH NATURE. 

Niagara, November 5, 1853. 

CORYDON, MY BROTHER : 

I am now leaning against 
the trunk of an evergreen tree on a beauti- 
ful island in the midst of Niagara's foaming 
waters. I am alone. No breath of wind 
disturbs the leaves of evergreen which hang 
mute and motionless around me. Animated 
nature is silent, for the voice of God, like 
the ''sound of many waters," is lifted up 
from the swathing clouds of hoary foam that 
rest upon the dark abyss below. 

" Oh^ fearful stream. 

How do thy terrors tear rne from myself 

And fill vty soul with wonder.'''' 

I gaze upon the broad green waters as they 
come placid and smooth, like firm battalions 
of embattled hosts, moving in steady col- 
umns, till the sloping channel stirs the depths 
and maddens all thy waters. Then with 
angry roar the legions bound along the 
opposing rocks, until they reach the awful 



brink, where all surcharged with frantic fury, 
they leap bellowing down the fearful rocks 
which thunder back the sullen echoes of thy 
voice^ and shout God's power above the 
cloudy skies ! O man ! Frail child of dust 
thou art to lift thy insect voice upon this 
spot where the Almighty thunders from the 
swelling floods that lift to heaven their hoary 
breath, like clouds of smoking incense. O, 
that the assembled millions of the earth 
could now behold this scene sublime and 
awful, and adore the everlasting God whose 
fingers piled these giant cliffs, and sent His 
sounding seas to thunder down and shout 
in deafening tones, "We come from out the 
hollow of His hand, and haste to do His 
bidding." 

Your friend and brother, 




All the pictures you may see, all the de- 
scriptions you may read of Niagara, can 
only produce in your mind the faint glim- 
mer of the glow-worm compared with the 
overpowering beauty and glory of the 
meridian sun. 

—John J. A udubon. 



THE CAVE OF THE WINDS. 

On a blazing hot, dry day in August, 
two strange creatures might have been seen 
carefully picking their steps down a narrow 
path cut in the steep precipice that overlooks 
the whirling and hurrying waters of Niagara. 
They were apparently Esquimaux; and they 
were attended by a third person, also appar- 
ently an Esquimaux. All three wore heavy 
and amorphous garments of a blue woolen 
stuff; but these were mostly concealed by 
capacious oilskins. They had yellow oilskin 
caps tightly strapped on their heads; yellow 
oilskin jackets, with flapping sleeves; yellow 
oilskin trousers of great width, but no par- 
ticular shape; and shoes of felt. 

These heavy garments became less hot as 
the Esquimaux began to receive shooting 
spurts of spray from the rocks overhead; 
and when, following their guide, they had 
to stand in a shower-bath for a few seconds, 
while he unlocked a small and mysterious 
portal, the cool splashing was not at all 
uncomfortable. Having passed through this 




gate, they had to descend some wooden 
steps, and now began to receive blows on 
the head and blows on the shoulders, as 
though an avalanche of pebbles was upon 
them; while strange gusts of wind, blowing 
up from some wild cauldron below, dashed 



across their faces and mouths, blinding and 
choking them. 

Laughter sounds wild and unearthly in the 
thunder of the falling waters and the pistol- 
shots hammering on one's head. Still fur- 
ther down the slippery steps go these three 
figures; and the roar increases; and the wild 
gusts rage with fiercer violence, as if they 
would whirl these three yellow phantoms 
into mid-air. The last of the wooden 
steps is reached; the travelers are on slippery 
rocks; and now before them is a vast and 
gloomy cave, and there is a wild whirlpool 
of lashing water in it, and beyond it, be- 
tween the travelers and the outside world is 
a blinding wall of water, torn by the wind 
into sheets of grey and white, and plunging 
down as if it would reach the very centre of 
the earth. The roar is indescribable. And 
how is it that the rushing currents of wind 
invariably sweep upward, as if to fight the 
falling masses of white water, and go whirl- 
ing a smoke of foam all about the higher 
reaches of this awful cavern ? 

— William Black. 





And there, 
between us and 
the Horseshoe Fall, what 
was that we saw? Was it some 
huge, pale ghost standing sentinel 
before Niagara? White, spectral, motion- 
less, it rose up and reached towards the 
stars— shapeless, dim, vague as a veiled 
ghost. It was like a great, colossal spectre 
wrapped in a robe of strange, dim light. 

■ — Lady Duffus Hardy. 



I have often looked upon those infuriated 
billows, which, for a mile above Niagara, 
spit their froth into each other's faces until 
the ocean below swallows their rage in its 
abysmal depths. Then they rise again ; 
with resurrected fury, they tear down the 
narrow gorge hemmed in by the high pre- 
cipitous rocks ; they bellow in their rage ; 
they shriek out in their despair ; thej^ moan 
in their anguish ; they dash against the 
stoical rocks ; there is no help ; down into 
the tideless, fathomless, pitiless whirlpool 
they are hurled. 

— Myron W. Haynes. 



MY LAST DAY AT NIAGARA. 
I sat upon Table Rock, and felt as if sus- 
pended in the open air. Never before had my 
mind been in such perfect unison with the scene. 
There were intervals, when I was conscious 
of nothing but the great river, rolling calmly 
into the abyss, rather descending than pre- 
cipitating itself, and acquiring tenfold majesty 
from its unhurried motion. It came like the 
march of Destiny. It was not taken by sur- 
prise, but seemed to have anticipated, in all 
its course through the broad lakes, that it 
must pour their collected waters down this 
height. The perfect foam of the river, after 
its descent, and the ever-varying shapes ot 
mist, rising up, to become clouds in the sky, 
would be the very picture of confusion, 
were it merely transient, like the rage of a 
tempest. But when the beholder has stood 
awhile, and perceived no lull in the storm, 
and considers that the vapor and the foam 
are as everlasting as the rocks which pro- 
duce them, all this turmoil assumes a sort 
of calmness. It soothes, while it awes the 
mind. — Nathaniel Hawthorne. 






V 






No pen picture could do justice to the 
wonderful scenery about the falls. The ice 
mountain is enormous; the park and islands, 
while difficult to traverse, are weirdly beau- 
tiful. At the brink of the American Falls 
are huge ice mounds, anchored undoubtedly 
to some jutting rock, and looking as though 
they were about to topple over every instant. 
The rocky walls of the gorge are masses of 
ice of fantastic designs. Every tree and 
shrub is incased in a marble-like coat of ice. 
— Buffalo Express. 



NIAGARA IN WINTER. 

I have seen the Falls in all weathers and 
in all seasons, but to my mind the winter 
view is most beautiful. I saw them first 
during the hard winter of 1854, when a hun- 
dred cataracts of ice hung from the cliffs on 
either side, when the masses of ice brought 
down from Lake Erie were together at the 
foot, uniting the shores with a rugged bridge, 
and when every twig of every tree and bush 
on Goat Island was overlaid an inch deep 
with a coating of solid crystal. The air was 
still and the sun shone in a cloudless sky. 
The green of the fall, set in a landscape of 
sparkling silver, was infinitely more brilliant 
than in summer, when it is balanced by the 
trees, and the rainbows were almost too 
glorious for the eye to bear. I was not 
impressed by the sublimity of the scene, nor 
even by its terror, but solely by the fascina- 
tion of its wonderful beauty. With each 
succeeding visit Niagara has grown in height, 
in power, in majesty, in solemnity; but I 
have seen its climax of beauty. 

— Bayard Taylor. 



Niagara is indeed a wonder of the world, 
and not the less wonderful, because time 
and thought must be employed in compre- 
hending it. Casting aside all preconceived 
notions, and preparation to be dire-struck 
or delighted, the beholder must stand be- 
side it in the simplicity of his heart, suffer- 
ing the mighty scene to work its own im- 
pression. Night after night, I dreamed of 
it, and was gladdened every morning b^^ 
the consciousness of a growing capacity' to 

enjo}^ it. 

— Nathaniel Haivihorne. 



NIAGARA'S POWER. 

The strongest and most enduring impres- 
sion produced upon the minds of most vis- 
itors to Niagara is the sense of its resistless 
power. The ordinary flow of water over 
the falls has been conservatively estimated 
at two hundred and seventy thousand cubic 
feet per second, and its daily force something 
more than seven millions horse-power, 
enough, could it be applied, to operate 
all the manufacturing establishments of this 
country. To utilize some proportion of this 
immense power has been attempted for a 
century, but not until the possibility of its 
transmission by electricity has it been at- 
tempted upon a gigantic scale. For more 
than three years over a thousand men were 
constantly employed in the construction of 
a tunnel from a point about a mile above 
the falls to an outlet just below the Suspen- 
sion foot bridge. Into the immense wheel- 
pits were sunk turbines far surpassing in size 
and power any previously constructed, each 
crowned by a Titanic mushroom of a dyn- 



amo, by means of which the power obtained 
is transmuted into electrical force. 

The faith shown by the great capitalists 
in this gigantic undertaking has been fully 
justified by the recent successful operation of 
the completed plant. Besides the develop- 
ment of the City of Niagara Falls, a great 
industrial town, Echota, is in process of 
construction, and the whole interior of New 
York State is beginning to anticipate an era 
of tremendous industrial activity. If the 
daring promises of Nikola Tesla, the greatest 
electrician of the world, are fulfilled, it will 
be found possible "to place a hundred thou- 
sand horse-power on a wire and send it four 
hundred and fifty miles in one direction to 
New York, the metropolis of the East, and 
five hundred miles in the other direction to 
Chicago, the metropolis of the West, and 
serve the purposes and supply the wants of 
these greatest urban communities," 




^^jiii5^ 



TO SEE NIAGARA. 

Niagara offers many scenes of marvelous 
beauty, of great variety, and of striking 
picturesqueness, that one should see under 
the varying conditions of sunlight and 
shadow, calm and storm, and under the 
silvery moonlight. Every mile of Niagara 
River, from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, 
especially from the Rapids above the Falls 
to the end of the gorge at Lewiston and 
Queenston, is filled with interesting and 
charming scenes. However long the traveler 
may linger, new beauties and new points of 
interest will present themselves, and the 
greater will be his appreciation of this won- 
derful scene. 

He has seen a grand sight who has looked 
out from Falls View, where the Michigan Cen- 
tral trains stop, but let him not think he has 
yet seen Niagara Falls, for the great cataract is 
many-sided, and should be seen from all 
points. The tourist will never know its majes- 
tic grandeur until he has stood below and 




seen its flood of waters 
pour from the very 
vault of heaven. He 
will never know Niag- 
ara's power until he 
has passed behind its watery veil and felt 
the buffeting of its prisoned air, or stood 
beside the Whirlpool Rapids, and felt the 
utter impotence of man. He will never know 
its indescribable beauty until he has watched 
the very center of the Horseshoe and wooed 
the spirit of the waters, or wandered in the 
wooded aisles of Goat Island, or by the fairy 
cascades of the Three Sisters. He will never 
understand its wonderful voice until he has 
stood at the foot of the Great Horseshoe, 
and listened to its thunder, that Eugene 
Thayer, the famous organist, declared was 
"not a roar, but the divinest music on earth." 
The banks of the river upon either side of 
the Falls have been reserved by the Ontario 
and New York State Governments as free 
public parks, so that the expense of a visit 
to Niagara has been shorn of exorbitant 
charges. The hotel accommodations at 



Niagara are ample, excellent in quality, and 
reasonable in price. On the Canadian side 
is the pifton House, open from May ist to 
November i st. On the American side the 
International and Cataract are open from 
May to about the first of November, vvrhile 
the Kaltenbach, the Prospect House and other 
hotels are open the year round. 

A visit to the Cave of the Winds, with 
guide and dress, costs a dollar, and the sim- 
ilar trip under the Horseshoe Falls, on the 
Canada side, fifty cents; the round trip on 
the inclined railway costs ten cents, and 
upon the Maid of the Mist, fifty cents. 
The toll over the new Suspension Foot and 
Carriage Bridge is ten cents in one direction, 
or fifteen cents for the round trip. The rate 
for vehicles is regulated by the number of pas- 
sengers. The hack fares at Niagara Falls are 
regulated by law and are very reasonable, while 
vans make the tour of the entire State Reser- 
vation, with the privilege of stopping off at 
any point of interest, for twenty-five cents. 

Besides the Lewiston Branch of the New 
York Central, an electric . railway on either 




! side of the river affords splen- 
did opportunities to see the 
river, including the rapids, 
the falls, the whirlpool, 
and the gorge in detail 
and to the best advan- 
tage. That on the Can- 
ada side runs from 
Chippawa, on the 
Niagara Division of 
the Michigan Central, 
through the Queen 
"" Victoria Park, past 
the Horseshoe Fall 
and along the brinl^ 
of the gorge, by tn 
whirlpool, to Brock's Monument oi 
Queenston Heights where the slop" is 
descended to the steamer dock at Queenston. 
The line is i ^\^ miles long, and the rate from 
Chippawa to Queenston forty cents, or 
seventy-five cents for the round trip. 

On the American side the cars start froi 
the Soldiers' Monument at the foot of Falls 
Street and gradually descend the gorge just 



above the Cantaliver Bridge. From this 
point to Lewiston the river bank '.s closely 
followed but a few feet above the water, 
passing directly by the Whirlpool Rapids, 
the Whirlpool itself, and the long succession 
of the lower rapids, emerging from the 
gorge opposite Queenston Heights. The 
fare one way is thirty cents (less than was 
formerly charged to descend to the Whirl- 
pool Rapids alone), or sixty cents for the 
round trip. The fare by the Lewiston 
Branch of the New York Central is thirty- 
two cents one way and sixty cents for the 
round trip, excepting from June ist to Sep- 
tember 30th, when the one way rate is 
twenty cents, and for the round trip twenty- 
five cents. 




MAP OF 

K"IAGARA FALLS 

AND VICINITY 
SHOWING LINES OF THE 

M iCHIOAN HeNTRA L 

"The Niagara Falls Route" 



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PRINCIPAL HOTELS AT NIAGARA FALLS. '^ f 



NAME. LOCATION. PER DAY. 

Clifton House, OnCanadaSide,$4.oo&Lip 
International, Falls and Main, 3.00-5.00 

Prospect House, Second&Union, 1.00-4.50 
Cataract House, Main & Bridge, 4.50 & up 
Hotel Kaltenbach, 24 Buffalo St., 3.00 

Tower Hotel, 309 Canal St., 2.00 

Hotel Imperial, Falls & Second, 2.50-4.00 
Niagara Falls House, 338 Main St., 2.00 

Hotel Porter, i 16 Falls St., 2.50-4.00 

Columbia Hotel, First and Niagara, 2.00 
Niagara House, 412 Main St., 2.00 

Harvey House, 327 Third St., 2.00 

Salt's New Hotel, 355 Second St., 2.00 

Maley House, 723 Third St., 2.00 

United States Hotel, Falls & Second, 2.00 
Temperance House, 324 Second St., 1.50 & up 
Cosmopolitan, 2^3 Niagara St., 2.00 

Hotel Atlantique, Main and Niagara, 2.00 
CoLONADE Hotel, 221 Niagara St., 2.00 

European Hotel, 340 Riverway, 2.00 

Falls Hotel, 312 Main St., 2.00 

Hotel Schwartz, 16 Falls St., 1.00 



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